USB Readonly disk

[b4u]

Hi,

I need your help on overcoming a difficulty with a 4gb usb pen drive.

Recently I've inserted that USB disk into a Windows XP computer to copy files into. The computer took a loooooong time to install drivers and recognize the pen.

I thought that something wrong was going on, and removed the pen, then reinserted and waited a bit more time (that was when I realized it was taking time installing the drivers).

By the time it finished, I was unable to copy files into the pen and I thought it was somehow from the crappy computer.

Back to my main computer, I realized the USB pen has switched to a read-only mode, and I'm not able to do anything from it.

I've tried in windows diskpart do a "attributes disk clear readonly" and even a "clean all", tried to reformat it, but nothing, I'm still not able to make this usb pen writable. In a linux system, I was not able to solve it either.

Any tips on how to solve this?

Thanks in advance.

 

[corkyg]

I have several of the old 4GB flash drives - essentially I consider them as expendable. They do just go bad after a number of years. I would just replace- they are really not repairable.

 

[JackMDS]

It is also possible that the Pulling out the device while it is in the process of Install Damaged it forever.

In any case you have here a Big selection.

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=5gb+flash+drive

 

[vailr]

Try the "HP USB format tool":
http://filehippo.com/download_hp_usb_disk_storage_format_tool/
There's also an expensive and complicated option: "SpinRite" from grc.com costs ~$80.
However, for USB drives, needs to be run in "pure DOS mode" within a virtual machine.
A future version of SpinRite may be able to function without requiring a virtual machine to run repairs on USB drives, but not as of yet.